1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a content presentation system, a content presentation method, a content presentation assistance server, a content presentation assistance method, and an information storage medium, and in particular to a technique employed in a content reproduction device, for presenting appropriate content to a user.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, cable television, satellite broadcasting, and so forth have developed at a remarkable pace, and along with the prevalence of these systems, a vast amount of content has been aired. At the same time, the capacity of data storage means such as hard disk drives or the like has also increased significantly. Consequently, there may be cases where a vast amount of content is recorded and stored in a content reproduction device such as a hard disk recording device or the like, and smooth extraction of desired content from among the vast amount of content stored therein accordingly becomes difficult.
In order to address this situation, a content reproduction device equipped with a search function by which contents which fall in an accommodated search condition, such as a search key word or the like, is found or a recommendation function by which contents which meet the user's taste is found based on the history of contents reproduced by the user and is recommended to the user for review are available. With this arrangement, the user can readily find contents while utilizing these functions.
However, the search function has a shortcoming in that an appropriate result cannot be obtained unless an appropriate search condition is given. In addition, an operation to input a search condition including a key word or the like is generally troublesome. Also, even though the determination about the user's taste is made based on the history of contents reproduced by the user during a limited period of time in the past, it is not always true that the user still has the same taste, as personal taste may vary. Therefore, it is not always possible for the recommendation function to recommend appropriate content to the user.
The present invention has been conceived in view of the above and aims to provide a content presentation system, a content presentation method, a content presentation assistance server, a content presentation assistance method, and an information storage medium, all for allowing users to achieve instant finding of content which meets their present taste without the need to conduct a troublesome input operation.